길먼의『면죄』에 나타난 ‘중세적’ 억압에 대항하는 여성주체

Abstract

This article is to examine Unpunished: A Mystery, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s final detective novel, by reading it as a female gothic novel and a survival story of a postmodernist female subject. The narrative of this novel changes the fundamental question of a detective novel, ‘who killed the dead man,’ into why the murderer has to kill this man. By doing so, the novel focuses on an aggressor who deserves to die and a female victim released from domestic violence. This novel is, thus, a female gothic novel which reveals the life of a suffering heroine who is sexualized as an object of desire and victimized by a powerful male villain. The heroine, Jacqueline, deliberates the survival strategies of role-playing and masquerade. She challenges the oppression of a villain, Mr. Vaughn, with studied posture of conformity as if she acted on stage. With scars on her face, which serve as a mask to hide her feeling, Jacqueline acts as a perfect housekeeper. Moreover, Jacqueline makes Mr. Vaughn die from heart attack by wearing a mask of Iris, her sister, who was victimized by Mr. Vaughn and committed suicide. This doubly masked Jacqueline is not only an active heroine in the female gothic novel but also a gender performative subject who takes up not only femininity but also masculinity. Jacqueline’s gender performance is well represented in her three different names, Mrs. Warner/ Jacqueline/ Jack. Mrs. Warner seems to represent a woman who safely settles in the male-dominant patriarchal society. Yet she is also called as Jacqueline, an equal pair of Iris, her sister. However, called as a male name Jack, she plays a role as protector of children and her sister. This protean changeability of her names embodies her gender-flexibility which makes her survive despite patriarchal oppression. To sum up, in Unpunished, Gilman depicts a postmodernist female subject who successfully overthrows the Father’s law and survives “mediaeval” gothic conventions imposed on woman.